On April 16th 2007, the ExhibitA gallery on the Odyssey simulator within
the online virtual world called Second LifeT, will present the first
comprehensive look at the pioneering work of Gazira Babeli.
Gazira Babeli is an artist creating works within Second Life and a
member of Second Front - the first performance art group in Second Life.
Gazira labels herself a "code performer" and indeed the code is at the
heart of her work, tying it to the system at a deep level and reaching
out to the viewer in ways that inherent to the SL platform. Her pieces
are alive with scripts created using the Linden scripting language - a
core component of Second Life. A Campbells soup can that is a trap, and
a self proclaimed menace disguised as pop art, encases the viewer and
takes him on a ride proclaiming "you love pop art, pop art hates you"
until the unsuspecting avatar manages to run fast enough to escape. The
sky filled with question marks, a vengeful tornado, these are a few of
Gaz's signature works that can be seen on her site: gazirababeli.com. In
the spirit of opensource - Gazira has licensed much of her code via
creative commons, and you can download it for your own use on her site:
gazirababeli.com.

Please join us for the opening of this exhibit. Press are invited to
attend at 1pm SL time. The general opening is at 6pm SL time. Inquiries
may be directed to Beavis Palowakski: rushchris {AT} mac.com, or to Sugar
Seville: sugarseville {AT} gmail.com.

Following are some press excerpts regarding Gazira Babeli.

"Born in Second Life on 31st March 2006, *Gazira Babeli*
(http://www.gazirababeli.com/) is an artist who turns the performativity
of the code into performance itself. Weedy and flexuous in her long
black dress which covers fashionably her polygonal haunches, Gazira
radiates a strange charm that makes her somebody in between a Voodoo
witch and an X-men heroine. Her charm that becomes even more evident
during her masterful performances, in which she activates scripts as if
they were spells, makes earthquakes happens, provokes natural fatalities
and invasions of pop icons (in the place of the biblical locusts).
Gazira Babeli is NOT the project of an artist who works in Second Life.
She IS an artist, who makes, records and signs performances based on
code. She is real, like you and me, even if her action platform is a
world of bits."
- Domenico Quaranta, 2006-12-02

"Linden Labs is a Fluxus-Project", jokes Gazira Babeli, the
pizza-throwing Second-Life-Artist and makes a reference to the Slogan of
Linden Labs. "Your World. Your Imagination". This is a indication for
the fact, that in the metaverse art and life are connected as far like
the fluxus-artist would have wanted to, she remarks ironically. [...]
Gazira Babeli is one of the few artists, who has created works, which
are subversively inflitrating the friendly environment of cyber-suburbia SL.
- Tilman Baumgärtel, Kunstzeitung, March 2007

We keep forgetting that what we call Real Life has been a virtual frame
for a long time. Second Life offers the chance to build and deconstruct
this space in the form of a theatre performance. What's the difference?
I'm trying to find out. For the moment I like to say: my body can walk
barefoot, but my avatar needs Prada shoes.
- March 23, 2007 - Interview with Gazira Babeli by Tilman Baumgärtel
http://www.turbulence.org/blog/archives/003987.html

Gazira: To realize an "artistic" or "aesthetic" experience, it requires
a frame-space that is contemporarily physical and conceptual; it could
be a frame, a museum, a computer network, a bedroom... or just a plain
box 'dressed' like a RL art-galley. This referential "cube gallery"
reminds me of the ironical artwork made by Marcel Duchamp called "Box
in a valise" (Boîte-en-valise, 1942)
Although the "box gallery" could be a valid expression, I prefer
thinking the whole SL environment as (a kind of) frame-space. It means
that scripted and built objects, avatar-people and their behaviors
become essentially parts of the artwork...a "world in a valise", in this
case. :)
- Interview with Jeremy Turner (Wirxli Flimflam) for Slatenight magazine
http://www.slatenight.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=143